


Heavy is the Head, Though Not so Heavy as the Heart

by Whyndancer



Series: Scattered Memories [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Deus Ex Machina, Gen, Loki Needs a Hug, Loki is so bad at Feelings, all my feels, and it's mostly his own fault, but not entirely, but there's no one around to give him one, magical therapy, passing mentions of torture, well a lot of them anyway, where the god in question is his mother
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 18:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8411704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whyndancer/pseuds/Whyndancer
Summary: Wounds of the body heal readily enough for the Aesir, even for a Jotunn in an Aesir's skin.  Wounds of the heart and mind are not so easily repaired. Sometimes, though help is found in the places you least expect.





	

**Author's Note:**

> In Which I literally Deus-ex-Machina post TDW Loki into a somewhat less toxic mental and emotional state.  
> The title is a riff on "heavy is the head that wears the crown".  
> Darcy makes an appearance next chapter.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Many, many thanks to [Yatzuaka](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Yatzuaka/pseuds/Yatzuaka) for her encouragement and support.

    The great golden doors swung shut behind the last of the exiting counselors, leaving the old king to sit finally alone at the head of the long table. He sat there in silence as the lights of the council chambers grew dim, shoulders drooping in exhaustion now that there were none present who would use the show of weakness against him. Eventually the AllFather stood and made his way back to the royal chambers, and if Gungnir bore more of his weight than ever as he walked, only the eternally loyal and discreet Einherjar were present to witness it.  When he reached his destination he barred the doors behind him, wards for privacy flaring as he did so. Concealed at last from all eyes but his own, he staggered, dropping to a knee as his form blurred in a swirl of green and gold light.  When it looked as though the lights were about to dissipate, the hand on the great golden spear clenched in a white knuckle grip and they began, instead, to pour off the kneeling figure and coalesced into a bright point in front of him.  With his free hand, the man reached into an interior pocket of the long coat he wore and withdrew a dark green crystal flask that glowed from within.  He coaxed the new light from where it hovered in front of him into the flask. The light within it flared briefly, then subsided to the fainter glow from before.  

    Loki tucked the vial back into his coat with trembling fingers, before pulling himself upright and dragging himself two rooms over only to collapse on the bank of low couches in what had been Frigga’s private weaving room. It was here that he had slept these last months.  While he found it comforting to be surrounded by the remnants of her seider that lingered in her workspace, he could not bear to sleep in her bed. It felt too much like disrespect, all things considered. As for Odin’s bed, well… Odin’s bed was currently occupied. By Odin. 

    He glared at Gungnir where it had rolled to the edge of the cushions after falling with him when his legs gave out.  It was a weak glare at best, though.  At present he had neither the energy nor the emotion for a proper one.  The months he has spent ruling as Odin have reminded him that he’d spent the vast majority of his life wanting nothing to do with the throne.  Assuming the Allfather’s form and duties meant taking on powers and responsibilities that he has found to be increasingly unpleasant.  His plans required him to play Odin’s part convincingly for some time yet, and though much of the work was tedious at best, the sheer volume of it left him little time to nurse the blinding rage that had sustained his willful rejection of any personal responsibility for the actions that brought him to this place. He’s also found that as that rage is slowly smothered beneath an ever growing mountain of paperwork and bureaucracy, the burning drive for vengeance has begun to give way to the aching chill of exhaustion and despair. All of this on top of maintaining a near constant illusion for months on end, maintaining his most powerful cloaking spells at all times, scrying on scores of individuals and organizations across dozens of worlds, feeding the magic that extended the Odinsleep indefinitely, and, perhaps most taxing of all, making psychic recordings of nearly everything he is doing in guise of the Allfather to craft into false memories so that Odin will not be aware of how long he has slept.  That sort of memory manipulation was one of the most complex and draining types of magic he knew.  All of this would be so much  _ simpler  _ if he did not yet need Odin  _ alive. _ As much as he would rather not admit it, he has reached a rather definite limit in his magical abilities. Of course, this is the first time he’s had the  _ opportunity, _ much less the need to use his powers to this extent.  At least for the scrying he has a number of enormously powerful tools at his disposal, else he’d have hit this wall long ago. The two most potent of those tools were in the room with him at that very moment, though each of them took a toll on him in their own ways.

    He stretched his hand across the cushion to where the golden staff lay, fingers stopping just short of making contact with the metal. Gungnir has proven a dual edged weapon in more ways than one.  In addition to its formidable offensive power, it can grant its wielder the ability to see farther and more clearly into the depths of the cosmos than any save Heimdall himself.  The gatekeeper’s inborn ability was the product of nine generations of the most powerful  _ vǫlur  _ in the history of Asgard choosing consorts for the sole purpose of siring ever more powerful successors, and it was Heimdall’s sisters that crafted the enchantment within Gungnir that earned Odin the title ‘All Seeing’. Much like the gatekeeper, however, its power lacked any sort of subtlety or nuance, showing only the cold reality of the now.  And while the farsight it granted him allowed him to maintain his ruse and monitor those who had most recently been touched by the infinity gems -thereby being the most likely to come into conflict with Thanos in his quest to reclaim them - much of what it showed him served only to underscore his own deepening isolation and to draw his attention to things that might have been.

    Not that he would have been in any frame of mind to appreciate a missed opportunity for anything but vengeance or violence were it not for the other artifact in question. Or rather, what it had held when he’d first made use of it.

    He turned his head to look across the room at the wide stone basin that sat in the corner, worn smooth as glass, older than any he’d questioned could remember.  It had been one of the great treasures of Vanaheim before coming to Asgard as part of Frigga’s dowry, along with the grand loom that she used to channel her visions of the future.  The basin was better suited to projecting illusions over long distances when used as a brasier, or filled with water and used as a scrying pool to find insight into events of the past and present. As a scrying tool it had neither the reach nor the clarity that Gungnir afforded, but was far more subtle and had the ability to discern possible alternate outcomes of past events and to discern how seemingly unrelated events were connected.  A nearly invaluable tool when one was planning the downfall of one of the most powerful beings in the universe. When he’d first cast his magic into the waters within it, he’d also still been of a mind to engineer Asgard’s ruin. It was likely that he would yet be of that same destructive mindset that had plagued him to varying degrees for much longer than he cared to admit, had it not been for Frigga’s foresight. As his seiðr entered the basin it had triggered a spell lying dormant in the stone, and he found himself caught in a grand illusion of the late Queen’s creation. Seiðr rippled and shimmered out from the bowl and through the room, and in little more than the blink of an eye it had seemed as though he stood at the edge of a the small covered terrace at the outside of one of the smaller reading rooms in the Royal Library. The path that began at the edge of this particular terrace wound it’s way through a small orchard and around a corner of the massive golden edifice that soared above, leading finally to the back entrance to Frigga’s private garden.

    This was a space he knew quite well indeed, for all that he had not set foot there in decades.  It had been a favorite place of his as a child, and even as a young man he’s spent many an hour there, reading quietly in the shade.

_     “My dearest Loki.” _

    His knees nearly buckled as he spun to face the voice he’d never thought to hear again. Frigga sat regally in the plush reading chair in the corner, hidden in the shadow of the low overhang. He practically ran to her, falling heavily to his knees at the foot of her chair, not daring to so much as reach a hand out to her lest he disrupt the illusion, whose eyes were still fixed on a point over his shoulder, out in the gardens somewhere.

_     “I owe you an apology my  _ auð _.  Many apologies really, for many different things, not least of which is the fact that I cannot give them to you in person.  By the time you see this I will have passed on to the halls of Valhalla. I have Seen that my time is coming soon.  I have taken up my weaving again this past year after letting my loom lie idle for centuries longer than I ought…  Perhaps if I had not neglected it things might have been different.  Little good it does to wonder now.   _

_     Many of the things that the tapestry showed me made little sense, though, and so I turned as well to these waters that they might lend meaning to the scenes which I wove.  What I saw in the waters troubled me even more than than my weaving, though some of my distress has come from the understanding I have found.  To be brief, it is in watching Midgard that I feel I have gained the most valuable perspective.  That perspective has led me to look at our past in a new light.  And I found that I was not pleased with myself, not pleased with how I have behaved as a Mother to my sons.  I have failed both of my children, but with you, Loki, my failings went much deeper.  I still do not think, overall, that I have been a bad mother, but there are so many ways I could have been better, so many things I regret. _

_     You might be surprised, my dear, at how just how much insight I gained in watching Midgard.  At how much they could teach us.  There is much pain and conflict there to be certain, but there are many groups and individuals there who have devoted themselves to understanding the causes of suffering, that they might know better how to ease it, at both the personal level and on a realm wide scale. They struggle with implementation still, but they have discovered so much of value, and continue to learn more all the time. They’ve changed so much Loki. In just the last century, Midgard has seen more change and advancement than the Realm Eternal has seen in my entire life.  It is little wonder things are so often turbulent there.  In some ways, I do believe that they have even surpassed us. I know that there is much I have learned from them in just this past year, and much more I wish I could learn if only I had the time.  But my time in this world is limited, and even now grows short.  And so I take this time to offer you my apologies. _

_     I am so very sorry, Loki, that I never told you of where you were born, of how you came to be my son.  And you are my son, Loki. You have been since the first moment Odin laid you in my arms, and you will be until Ragnarok wipes clean the slate.  I need for you to know that you have always been loved. _

_     I make a point of telling you this, because it has come to my attention that I did not show that love as well as I could have. I can even understand why you might be reluctant to claim me as mother.  I have kept terrible secrets from you for your entire life, long past the time you were old enough to be told. While I myself have not spread any of the stories of how ‘monstrous’ the Jotunn supposedly are, neither have I done anything to quell such stories where I hear them.  Time after time, I have made excuses for your father and brother when they treated you unfairly, rather than admit, even to myself, that they were in the wrong.  How many times did I downplay your concerns when someone had been cruel to you?  How many times did my attempts to reassure you unintentionally give the impression that the problem was with you...  How many times did I make excuses for  _ you  _ when you  _ were _ in the wrong.  How many times have I excused myself for not doing or saying more by telling myself that my duties as Queen came first?  I am sorry for all of it, for all the little ways in which I failed you. _

_     “In retrospect, it’s little wonder that neither of my sons is very good at claiming responsibility for the consequences of their actions.  Neither Odin or myself have ever really given you proper examples to learn from.“ _

    She paused a moment, sighing heavily, the fingers of her right hand picking at the palm of her left where they rested in her lap, a gesture that had always been so familiar to him that his own hands had learned it centuries ago without him realizing it, one of the few tells that he could not fully suppress. Now though, his hands were clenched desperately into white-knuckled fists at his sides, fingernails tearing the flesh of his palms bloody with the effort it took to keep from reaching out to sooth the nervous tic.  Whatever attempts he’d made at stifling the tears that now coursed freely down his face had been forgotten the moment she’d called him  _ auð _ .  That had been what she called him as a child, because he was, as she’d liked to say, her brightest gem, her most precious treasure - her  _ auð. _

_     “I’ve always said that your father has a reason for everything he does.  Likewise, I’ve had my own reasons for all the things I have and have not done.  But just as the reasons for his actions, for my actions, cannot excuse them and do not lessen the harm they have caused, neither can your actions be excused or justified by the wrongs done to you.  Some of the things you have done in these past few years are truly reprehensible. In truth, in light of the perspective I have gained of late, they are even more terrible than I had first imagined.  And I know that right now you cannot even see what you have done wrong.   _

_     “There was a time, my  _ auð,  _ when you knew compassion better than any of us. And through our actions we trained it out of you. We have left scars on your heart because you were not like enough to us in our arrogance.  And I have Seen more than enough of your time both during and after the Void that I grieve over what was done to cause the scars in your mind.   Oh my love.  There is so much more that I wish that I could say to you, but it is those scars that trouble me most.  As a mother I want nothing more dearly than to see my children happy, and so I have invested the majority of my seiðr in a spell that will do the most to give  _ both  _ of my children the greatest chance to find and keep as much happiness as as they can in their lives.  I am likely being selfish again in taking this choice out of your hands, but I cannot bring myself to leave you without giving you this last chance. There is simply too much darkness for a mother bear on those paths forward in which you are not given a chance to heal.   _

_     “And so that is what I give to you now - healing. All of the healing magic that I have to give has been bound up in this spell, and what little I could ask of Eir without raising suspicion. The things I have learned in my scrying these past months have been my guide in its design. For all this, it is not a miracle. I cannot undo all the harm that has been done to you, I cannot force you to seek happiness, I cannot  _ fix _ you.  While I do believe that this spell should be able to heal most of the damage done to your mind after-”  _ Her voice broke, grief and heartache momentarily twisting her features into a mask of pain.  The moment passed and, composure restored, she continued her explanation.  _ “- following your fall from the Bífrost. That damage is both relatively recent and seems to have been inflicted with both malice and deliberation.  Though all my skill in divination has shown me no more than an echo of the one responsible, I fear you are not yet free of their darkness. I can See it still in your past, present and future.  _

_     “And yet, please, please believe me when I say that there IS the chance for happiness in your future, if only you will take it. You may not recognize it for what it is at first because I fear we have taught you to look for value in only a few specific things.  In that too have we failed you. I have lately wondered if it is a failing throughout the whole of Asgard.“ _

    A wistfulness crept over her face then and her fingers flexed a moment as though reaching for words that eluded her grasp.

_     “There is so much more I wish I could say to you, but I cannot maintain this part of the spell much longer.  So I will say once more while I still can that I love you, my son, my auð, my Loki.  I love you no matter what may come, never doubt and never forget. Goodbye my Loki. Until we meet once more in Valhalla’s halls, and may it be after you have lived long and happily.” _

    As she finished her final farewell, Frigga had lifted her hands from her lap and held them out in front of her, palms up in entreaty, a poignant echo of the last time he’d seen her. And, just as before, when he’d laid his hands in hers the illusion had dissolved into lines of pale green light that glowed almost painfully bright through his tears.  This time, though, rather than fading the shining lines of seiðr had begun moving, flowing from all across the room into the palms of his hands, burning ever brighter into the points where he’d made contact with the illusion.  He’d felt it’s warmth move through him, filling every jagged crack and gaping hole in his broken heart and battered psyche. Overwhelmed, he’d quickly succumbed to unconsciousness, waking some hours later curled up on the floor several long strides from where he'd started.  

    The first thing he'd noticed was a mild ache behind his temples, followed swiftly by the realization that  _ nothing else hurt.  _ The sharp spikes of pain up and down his back that he'd been prone to getting since the third time Thanos had put his spine back together after having had most of his vertebrae dislocated by The Other were entirely absent.  The constant burning pull at the base of his skull had ceased.  The slivers of bright blue afternoon sky that he could see out the window no longer sent blinding spikes of pain through the backs of his eyes. And the persistent hollow ache below his sternum, where the Kursed’s blade had run him through had finally eased, and when he pulled his shirt up to look at the wound, the angry red scar that had been nearby the width of his hand had faded to a silvery line no thicker than his smallest finger. Physically, he’d felt better than he had in years. 

    The mental effects were immediately notable as well.  He felt calmer and more centered than he could remember feeling since we'll before the disastrous coronation.  Memories of his time in the void and after were no longer edged with razor blades.  His thoughts and ideas had ceased chasing themselves in barbed circles around his mind, and the dark little voices in the back of his head that had long whispered to him of desolation and betrayal was muted and distant.  The volatile well of rage, mania and black despair that had been rising a little at a time for centuries now to the point of overflowing in the last few years had been drained. The emotions were still there, but they were distant now, leaving him feeling, in truth, a bit hollow.  And then the grief that he'd been so fiercely holding at bay by wielding his anger as a shield against it rushed in to fill the space and he'd curled up there on the floor and wept.

    He’d shut himself away in the royal chambers in the next few days, no one much questioned the Allfather’s need for solitude in his grief, though there had simply been too much that needed Odin’s personal attention for any long recovery period to be feasible.  And so, for all that Loki had received a massive dose of physical and mental healing shortly after assuming the throne as Odin, he had since run himself nearly into the ground in trying to keep up the illusions.  

    He was still convinced that the message and the healing together constituted the greatest gift he had ever been given.  And if the only way to thank Frigga for what she’d done was to try and keep safe the things she had loved, to fight against the darkness she’d so feared… then he would spend the rest of his life in doing so. He only wished that he could tell her that his choice would have been the same.  

    One of the many benefits of the spell, and one that had not faded as his exhaustion had increased, was that it had allowed him a degree of objectivity in his observations and reactions that he had been sorely lacking for far too long.  This had proven invaluable, as nearly all of his current plans relied on accurate information, and in retrospect he could admit that his ability to accurately interpret even the things that he saw and heard firsthand had been seriously compromised. And so it was with a profound sense of gratitude that he’d made the most of the remarkable resources he had at hand, and set himself to watching as much as he could.

    Watching Asgard had cemented in his mind that there was no place for him there, at least not as himself.  There never really had been. None of the things that made him who he was, the things that gave him greatest personal pleasure, were particularly valued, leastways not in one of his gender and station, and that was something that was unlikely to change in his own lifetime. So very little  _ ever  _ changed in Asgard, with generations and their opinions lasting millennia and children raised to accept the opinions of their parents and teachers without question. And in a society where there was so very little natural variance there was rarely any reason for anyone to think change might be a good thing.

    He watched Midgard frequently as well. For one, he felt it prudent to stay aware of what Thor’s compatriots, these so call ‘Avengers’, were occupying themselves with as they had managed to draw Thanos attention with their last parting shot and there was still an infinity stone wandering about the planet.  That too had been cause for concern as the scepter changed hands multiple times as Fury’s organization crumbled round it’s rotten core. 

    Even beyond such strategic concerns,  though, he found himself watching Midgard out of curiosity.  What was it that his mother had seen in these mortals that had so captivated her, so inspired her? The only other clues he’d been able to find among his mother’s belongings were two books, both oddly bound. One was a rather large, slightly worn book whose title marched plainly across the cover and spine in the Midgardian English language,  _ “Introduction to Psychology” _ .  The other was notably smaller, it’s bright red cover decorated in simple pictograms with even brighter yellow text naming it  _ “The Psychology Book”.  _  He’d read them each from cover to cover, but was only just starting to properly wrap his head around the concepts within. 

    He found himself paying closer and closer attention to the members of the ragtag group that had only come together to stop him. And the more he watched them the more he found that he  _ wanted _ to watch them.  All of them were fascinating in their own ways and he found himself watching not only their present endeavors, but scrying into their pasts in his desire to understand them. The longer he watched them though, the larger the ball of regret that lived in the pit of his gut seemed to grow.  

    He’d found that he actually  _ liked _ these people.  Shared upbringing aside, he would wager that he had more in common with any  _ one  _ of the odd group than he did with Thor. Every one of them understood the pleasure in a sharp or witty turn of phrase.Stark knew what it was to spend one's childhood failing to live up to a father's expectations only to then turn around and start living down to the expectations of others. Rogers had spent the entirety of his youth on the sidelines because he had not been as fast or strong as others his age.  Banner knew better than any what it was like to wake up one day with the knowledge that there was a monster under one's skin. Romanova understood almost as well as he that there are times when artful deception is a thousand times more productive than any degree of honest debate.  Barton…  he found himself uncomfortable watching Barton more than in passing, for reasons he did not feel he could afford to examine too closely at this time.

    When he’d had time and energy enough to spare on self pity he’d sometimes wondered whether under different circumstances they might have liked him at all in return.  It was fortunate in that respect that ruling Asgard and preparing for an intergalactic war the likes of which had not been seen since  history was little more than myth and legend left him very little time for sure crass self indulgence. 

    His time wearing Odin’s face was finally  drawing to a close though, and not a bit too soon.  There was little left for him to set in motion here on Asgard, and he was fairly certain that he'd done things in such a way that Odin would not wonder too hard at it and dismantle all his preparations. Midgard, on the other hand was poised for catastrophe.  The Avengers had located the base at which the scepter was being held, though they did not yet know that for the certainty that he did, and we're set to raid it within the next few days. He did not have the gift of foresight that his mother had possessed, but all the portents that he  _ could  _ read pointed to a massive crisis breaking out shortly after it should come into their possession.  And even if the crisis should be avoided, allowing Thor to bring the Mind Gem back to Asgard’s vaults so near to the Tesseract was not an outcome that he could be pleased with either. 

    And besides, as gratifying as it was to have his orders obeyed without question , it was disheartening to know that everything he did would be credited to Odin. That the respect he so craved was out of reach as himself. The longer he wore Odin’s face the more untenable it seemed to continue to live as someone else. The God of Lies needed to find a way to live so that he could at least stop lying to himself.

    All the pieces were in place.  He had arranged that Odin be allowed a few days rest without being disturbed. He needed only tie up the last loose ends (arranging to keep the scrying bowl in his possession, making sure the memory spell on Odin was complete) and he would be ready to leave. The scepter was very close to being recovered. It was time to talk to Thor.

    As he sprawled there on the low couch and mentally finalized this stage of his planning exhaustion began to settle in.Loki’s eyes drifted shut before he could summon the energy to pull himself back up off the couch, and he fell deeply into sleep.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So, this story took me months. I realize it's not that long, but I've crammed so many of my Loki feels and my Loki &Frigga feels into this that it was like drawing blood from a wound. The problem with writing any sort of sympathetic Loki that at least mostly canon is that he is a damn angst machine and it's hard to finagle him into anything resembling a healthy enough emotional state to be part of a healthy relationship. This is my solution. A little validation goes a long way, but it goes a lot farther when accompanied by magical healing.  
> Feel free to ask me all the questions about this fic. I could talk about it a lot.  
> (And no, he's still not in a 'good' or 'healthy' place emotionally - he's kind of swung to another emotional extreme, but it's not nearly so toxic for him or the people around him. )


End file.
